LONDON (RNS) A self-styled druid who likens himself to a king in ancient Britain has lost his bid to rebury a set of prehistoric human remains at a sacred pagan burial site.
John Timothy Rothwell — who changed his name to King Arthur Pendragon in court documents — lost his court battle to win custody of the cremated remains from a team of experts at Sheffield University.
Justice Wyn Williams of London’s High Court threw out Pendragon’s claim, ruling Tuesday (Aug. 23) that scientists had not acted unreasonably three years ago when they dug up the remains of more than 40 bodies, which are thought to be more than 5,000 years old.
The forensic experts are now allowed to keep the ashes for study and analysis until 2015. Researchers are expected to rebury them in the same spot where they were found at England’s prehistoric pagan stone circle at Stonehenge.
The would-be “king” was left fuming, after testifying that the ashes belonged to members of a “royal line,” or priestly caste in ancient England, who he said could have been the “founding fathers of this great nation.”
Pendragon, who signed himself as “Arthur Rex” on court documents, had demanded that the remains be reinterred immediately.
“If we don’t get them (scientists) to, force them to put them (the ashes) back, they’re going to end up in (a) museum,” he told journalists before the hearing.
Naomi Phillips, representing the British Humanist Association, told the court that “druids have no more genetic claim over the human remains than anyone else in western Europe.”